Chapter 126: The Blue Roses (１)

****

Contrabass raised a flare, and orange flame lit the darkness of Seoul’s underground labyrinth.

“Follow me closely. Stay alert.”

Silver snapped her fingers. A faint silver light swept across the walls, and insects and rats scurried away from Silver’s light.

“Disgusting. Which way are we going? Is wandering the underground the plan?”

Silver’s voice came out distorted, likely due to the gas mask. The warped voice echoed through the tunnel. The others kept their mouths shut.

Something rustled beneath their feet.

“And what’s this white powder on the floor?”

“Salt.”

“Why salt…?”

“Concrete can erode when it touches groundwater. Seems like it was laid down to prevent flood damage. Just a guess, though.”

Silver glanced around. Contrabass spoke after a long pause.

“The objective. We’re looking for the government’s fallout shelter. I have no intention of sleeping rough in a bare tunnel.”

The six humanoid anomalies looked around. It was a grotesque place, as expected. Even if there wasn’t a single strange thing down here.

The underground space itself was terrifying.

“What kind of tunnel is this, and why was it built—no, who built it?”

“Who knows. Could be the Foundation, could be the government. The salt on the floor might have some ritual significance.”

Spade tasted the salt on the ground.

“Well, if this were a tunnel made for mundane purposes, there’d be cables or something laid in it. This tunnel is probably a sealing array or magic circle that loops back on itself. That’s why the salt is here.”

****

The Director’s Office desk was clean.

I’m not normally the type to keep a desk tidy. I tend to scatter papers and things around, but I’m too uneasy to use the Director’s Office desk that way. No particular reason, though.

Right now, the Director’s Office desk held only my fountain pen, a laptop, and a telephone connected to Headquarters.

Click, clack. Click, clack.

After the footsteps, a person stood waiting outside the Director’s Office door. She seemed too afraid to knock, just waiting there.

“Come in.”

Paper stepped into the Director’s Office.

She hates the Director’s Office.

I don’t know exactly why she feels that way, but I can’t say I don’t understand it. Honestly, I hate that telephone to Headquarters too.

“Right. Miss Paper, if anyone wraps an omelet and puts it in the Director’s Office fridge one more time, tell them I’ll actually kill them.”

Miss Paper recorded the message in her notebook. O—me—let.

“I’ll pass that along.”

“Is this about the molecular biology experiment? Tell them I’ll structure the angel feather’s molecular composition later. I’m too busy for radiation crystallization right now. They can just look at it under an electron microscope.”

“It’s not that.”

Paper cleared her throat.

“Director. I think you need to see this yourself. It seems like a fairly serious situation…”

A phrase I hear several times a day.

I should count them sometime. I feel like I hear that line at least ten times a day. How is every single situation serious?

When I nodded, Miss Paper rushed over to me holding something in her hand.

“Look at this. A report that on the day of Operation Two Lures, six suspicious individuals infiltrated Lotte World Tower in Jamsil and then vanished without a trace.”

“So what happened?”

“Support is tracking them, but they’ve gone underground entirely and the pursuit is hitting difficulties. They say once they disappear into the labyrinth beneath the city, there’s no way to find them.”

The labyrinth is a truly awful place.

The labyrinth lies beneath most major cities—a tangled mess of subways, sewers, national fallout shelters, and natural caves.

It’s hard to call it an anomaly itself, but it’s true that there are many anomalies inside the labyrinth.

“Well done. Tell them to keep doing what they’re doing. It was an operation meant to lure the Group of Interest anyway, and we succeeded in the luring.”

Why did they come to Seoul, and—

“Has anything been reported on what they’re doing?”

Paper shook her head.

“I read the report—nothing is known yet. They don’t know why they came to Seoul or how they got here.”

It was possible the information hadn’t reached Miss Paper. Maybe there was something too complicated to relay or explain. I should go see her myself, right?

****

In the meeting room I’d reluctantly gone to, two people were already waiting. Dr. Gwak, Chief of the Remote Viewing Division, and Lee Hwa, Head of Support.

“Hello, Director.”

I looked at the two of them.

“Get straight to it. I’m busy.”

The Head of Support opened her mouth.

“Yes. To support the ‘Two Lures’ operation last time, we spread our surveillance net tighter than usual for the day the operation was running.”

“Yes.”

“We can’t do anything about the countless anomalous groups in the shadows, or the cults that worship anomalies. There’s no reason to poke a hornet’s nest and cause problems.”

Pseudo-religious organizations, violent gangs. There are dozens of self-proclaimed Second Coming Jesuses in Korea alone. It’s not hard to carry out the elimination of the many groups that don’t even qualify as Groups of Interest.

A single agent or two could wipe them out or break them apart. It’s just that the time and money spent in the process would be a bit of a waste.

“Yes.”

“We don’t track every little squabble they have among themselves in the shadows anyway, but humanoid anomalies entering a tourist site was genuinely unusual. They got caught on our detection net, so we analyzed them intensively.”

“So. You’re saying six of them broke into Lotte Tower? No terrorism or anything like that?”

“No traces of that. And they didn’t break in—they paid the entrance fee and walked in.”

“Ah. Well, anything left behind?”

“They just came and went. We don’t know why, and most of the CCTV and recording devices on site were hit by information decay, so there’s not much left.”

I checked my phone. Nanami had apparently just clocked in at the Director’s Office. She lives inside the Foundation—why is she always this late to work?

“And then?”

“We tracked their movements as far as we could, but the trail cut off at a subway station. They probably went underground. Into the labyrinth beneath Seoul.”

All good news.

“What do you think they are? And for that matter, what made you think they were humanoid anomalies in the first place, rather than just people passing by?”

“The magical information decay raised our suspicions. We’d need to look into their identities more specifically, but… uh. No idea at all.”

So they know nothing.

“Sorry to say this, but… you have no intention of chasing them into the labyrinth, you don’t know what they are, and you don’t know their purpose. If that’s the case, why not just keep it to yourself—why bring it to me?”

The Head of Support turned her gaze to Dr. Gwak.

“Dr. Gwak. Please, go ahead.”

Dr. Gwak cleared his throat.

“Ah, yes. Anyway, since we had a lead on the enemy, the Remote Viewing Division threw everything we had into tracking these people. They’re not a pseudo-religious group or a violent gang operating inside Seoul.”

“Yes.”

It’s gotten complicated again. What do these things want, and why did they show up in Seoul of all places?

****

[Six Anomalous Humans at Sauron Tower]

[Filed by: Dr. Gwak]

[First question: Does tracking the six humanoid anomalies that appeared at Lotte Tower help the Foundation achieve its goals?]

[Card drawn: The Tower (reversed). Keyword: required destruction. The astrologer’s interpretation was that tracking and destroying these humanoid anomalies would serve the Foundation’s goals.]

[Coin toss result: 19:14. The coin leans toward the proposition being true.]

[Second question: Are the aforementioned humanoid anomalies hostile to the Foundation?]

[Card drawn: The World (reversed). Keyword: incompletion, uncertainty. The astrologer’s conclusion was that it was not certain they could be viewed as entities hostile to the Foundation.]

[Coin toss result: 17:16. The coin leans toward the proposition being true.]

[Third question: Are the aforementioned humanoid anomalies beings created by the Foundation?]

[Card drawn: The Fool (reversed). Keyword: recklessness and foolishness. No explanation is deemed necessary.]

[Coin toss result: 33:0. The Astral Plane’s answer is that of course they are.]

****

[Re: Sauron Tower six anomalous humans]

[Filed by: Dr. Geum]

[This document is under access restriction by order of the Director. Those without access clearance for this document should turn back here.]

[This document is protected by a cognitohazard. The Foundation assumes no responsibility for mental or physical harm resulting from violation of access restrictions.]

[Thank you for the report.]

[The Major Arcana cards came up reversed three times in a row. That appears to be an ill omen.]

[As a result of requesting police cooperation on this matter, it has been confirmed that the anomalies in question boarded a flight from Jeju Island to Incheon International Airport.]

[They are believed to be Blue Roses. The Blue Rose series anomalies currently confirmed dead or secured by the Foundation number seven instances.]

[Those caught in our search net are believed to be the seven missing Blue Rose instances.]

[Asking where the seventh is?]